Every day, 12 out of 88 business emails you receive are scams

Digital communication has amplified the possibility of getting in touch with people living on the other side of the globe in the quickest time possible. How many of you regularly use an instant messaging service or send an email? How many messages and emails do you send per day? I bet you don’t know. So I’ll tell you.

Information travels on the internet

One of the most widespread way of keeping in touch with people is probably by email. A survey conducted by The Radicati Group shows that last year there were 4,353 million email accounts (both business and consumer) worldwide and they expect this figure to grow 28% up by 2019. Furthermore, in 2015 over 205 billion emails were sent and received per day, with an average of 112 billion business and 93 billion consumer emails.

122 business emails sent/received per day

The report goes on saying that in 2015 professionals received on average 88 business emails per day, split between legitimate (76) and spam (12) emails. You might not see these spam emails because of spam filters made available by your email service provider, but the fact you are receiving these emails means that every day you are 13.63% likely to fall victim of a scam.

Cyber criminal scams travel via email

Email address spoofing, phishing, spear-phishing, whaling and social engineering are some examples of fraud usually spread via email. 83% of IT professionals interviewed for the think that email is one of the most common sources of cyber attacks and a further 64% think that such attacks pose a high (or extremely high) threat to their organization. Despite measures taken to prevent such attacks, two-thirds of IT pros don’t feel fully equipped or up-to-dated to avoid falling victim of email threats.

Go e-learning or stay unsecure

No matter how much an organization spend on cyber security defences, if its staff is not aware of email threats, all efforts are thrown to the wind. That’s why more and more companies are investing in staff awareness training programmes to educate their non-technical staff to be alert and vigilant.

E-learning training courses grant a host of benefits when compared to classroom, in-house or online training – no travel and accommodation expenses, individual access to the course from anywhere and at any time, less disruption of daily routines and consistent teaching, just to mention a few.